All of you who have done the same job for decades, how? I'm not complaining, there's something comforting in the day to day, but 15 years in I just... don't want to anymore. No partner no children, so that pressure is off, but I need to feed, heat and house myself. Thus, job is not optional. There's stuff I want to do, there's stuff in the neighbourhood that could be cleaner and better. I'm just an urchin, I don't need much, can I just do good and be fed?

I agreed to do a remote training course courtesy of the Job Centre. That course was cancelled, because not enough people wanted to do it, so I agreed to do another course. However, only this morning have I realised this is in person, meaning I have to schlep to another town to learn a load of bullshit in a room full of people. Fucking people! Christ, what a nightmare.

>>464345
>can I just do good and be fed?
They're going to kill you. They're coming to your home and they're murdering you.

>>464346
Sad news, I'll find you. One of us dies, no one cares.

> in a room full of people. Fucking people! Christ, what a nightmare.

You'll find that most jobs entail being in a room with people eight to ten hours every day.

>>464345
Do you mean the same job or the same job with the same company?

I tend to change employers every 6 or 7 years, but over the past 13 years I've changed roles about 7 or 8 times.

It's always satisfying to be able to write "paid" on your bills and invoices and file them. Just a relief to put something behind you. I was fretting about £360 I had to pay for something, but now that that money is transferred, I can just forget about it. The worst thing is when you know you've got something like that coming, and then dreading the day it'll be in the post. Every day that it doesn't arrive feels like reprieve, but you know you can't escape your obligation to eventually fork over the money.

I've thought about getting a rubber stamp that says "PAID" with the date.

>>464349
I know, but I did something like this years ago and it was me and one other bloke who wouldn't stop talking about his anxiety. Also jobs tend to pay a bit more than the £300 a month I currently get (I'm £90-something down because I needed a hardship payment, ha-ha).

>>464352

I got to visit a one-week seminar on public relations once, because the job centre was trying to steer me in that direction. The person holding the seminar spent most of those four and a half days telling us how great her PR agency was that she was the owner of. Can't say it wasn't insightful, but it did nothing to convince me that it was the right field for me.

>>464357
I think I'd respect PR more if they rebranded themselves as "turd polishers".

I don't like the OP picture of this new weekday thread. Time for a three-month-long weekend AHAHAHAHAHA

>>464367
You had plenty of opportunity to make your own weekday thread but you didn't. Let that be a lesson to you.

>>464359

One memorable take-home from the seminar for me was how to concoct ready-made news articles (faux would really be the better word) and how to get lazy news outlets to publish them unquestioningly. Which I found a bit unethical, at least if you bank on newspapers not having the staff and resources these days to impartially fact check what you give them before they put it out.

Me and my new housemate need to get into relationships. I worry I've become a bit of a boyfriend for her, listening to her life stuff and cheering her up over tea, watching television together, handling the bloke shit and she's sending me very gay texts when she's at work for listening to her and asking what I'm doing in the evening. She's also starting to invite herself to my work events and is following up on it even when it involves taking a trip. We're not each others type at all and she seems like a complete fucking nightmare to be in a relationship with but the rampant eye-fucking I'm doing from having a woman in my flat and spending all this time together is getting a bit much.

And it doesn't help that when I put this into an LLM it feeds me:

>You're right, it's generally considered more ideal to find a romantic partner who aligns with your preferences and "type." This often leads to greater compatibility and a stronger foundation for a long-term relationship. However, life doesn't always follow a predictable path, and sometimes unexpected connections can blossom into something meaningful.

>While it's important to be mindful of the potential challenges of dating someone you live with and who isn't your typical type, it's also important to be open to the possibility that this could be an exception to the rule.

Help lads, I just wanted someone to split the bills with and maybe go for a beer on the odd bank holiday but this is tipping more towards some boring bloke pushing a shopping trolly in B&Q on a Saturday afternoon.

>>464358
The neckbeard hides the double chin innit. And generally your hair grows thicker on your neck to your cheeks so unless you shave everyday you're going to be rocking something of the look.

>>464345
One day at a time. I've been in the same role for 4 years now and I hate it but I constantly get distracted in the process of moving up/sideways. It's a real problem I guess.

>>464370
>sometimes unexpected connections can blossom into something meaningful.
I think I read this in a fortune cookie once. I imagine it's about as insightful.

>>464370

For all intents and purposes, you already are in a relationship, just without the sex. If you're not okay with it you need to somehow knock it on the head, because she definitely sounds comfortable letting you fulfil the role of boyfriend in functional terms. That said:

>I just wanted someone to split the bills with and maybe go for a beer on the odd bank holiday

This is all I want from a relationship. I probably have become boring over the years but frankly after enough passionate but ultimately heartbreaking failed relationships with lasses I found compelling, I'm starting to feel like the type of dull but mutually beneficial cohabitation you're describing is actually the ideal.

>>464371
Exactly. I should be supportive as a friend, she seems like she needs it and has said she's lonely a few times but I should at the same time manage distance, any physical contact and otherwise any signals I send to avoid things getting incestuous.

>>464372
>I'm starting to feel like the type of dull but mutually beneficial cohabitation you're describing is actually the ideal

Sounds like rose-tinted glasses to me, emotional labour gets old when you're not really getting anything out of it. Going through the motions isn't enough and the vast majority of unhappy relationships seem to show it.

My sleep pattern has been normal, I had plenty of exercise today, ate well, no caffeine past lunch, bed's comfy and clean (as am I). I read for an hour before lights out instead of using any devices, didn't drink excessive liquids too late, I don't feel manic or wired, why the fuck can't I sleep?

>>464346
If you don't want to physically be around people for a living then IKEA are recruiting people to work in their virtual Roblox store.

https://thecoworker.co.uk/

>>464377
>Ten lucky candidates will be selected
I'd actually be interested in trying something like that, though I'd assume social skill would be a major factor. You'd pretty much be paid to roleplay.

>>464378
>You'd pretty much be paid to roleplay.

With kids or paedos pretending to be kids.

Anyone going to Glastonbury? My ex asked me to come *after* we broke up last year, so I'm really looking forward to 5 days of having an amazing time with her and regretting my decision.

>>464379
I've already said I'm interested, you don't have to sell it to me.
Incidentally that's the usual reason I attribute to those pedo hunter types - they just like pretending to be kids flirting with adults online.

In other news, my MusicMagipie order (of childrens films, no less) has come smelling of soap or perfume so strong it's giving me a headache.

A few thoughts today.

Are furries becoming more popular/accepted in society? I've been seeing them a lot more recently.

And why do we not seem to really utilise our islands that much? Surely they could be doing something cool. Most of them just have a shitty lighthouse and that's it. It's quite easy to forget we're on a small island sometimes. I don't think we have any particular affinity to the sea. We don't eat seafood, we don't really have anything culturally going on.

>>464383
>Are furries becoming more popular/accepted in society? I've been seeing them a lot more recently.

It probably says more about the company you keep.

>>464383

>Are furries becoming more popular/accepted in society? I've been seeing them a lot more recently.

I think they are, but it's a generational thing. The zoomers are a lot more accepting of people being gay or bi or trans or whatever and they generally don't as commonly see those things as valid reasons to bully someone. Being a furry has ended up as more of a legitimate subculture to them, like being a skater punk or emo kid was for us. The younger ones I have spoken with seem to have very little understanding of how fiercely hated furries were just a few years back, and they only encounter occasional negativity.

I'm a lot less closeted about being one than I was ten years ago, but I still don't exactly draw attention to it, because I imagine most people above the age of 30 who were ever online enough to know what furries are still primarily associate them with "yiff in hell" and Black Templar memes and all that.

Why were all the D-Day anniversary commemorations today when everybody knows D-Day was the 6th of June?

>>464386

Although the allied forces made landfall at dawn on June 6, it will have taken them some time on the day before to move into position.

Imagine being a German soldier in a bunker turret on the Normandy shoreline and seeing an absolute armada of enemy ships moving in through your binoculars as far as the eye could see. If there was ever a time to completely shit your pants, that was probably it.

I saw the way the weather is going and spent £80 on fans. I won't be caught out by summer again.

>>464381
Why'd you say yeah?

>>464383
We're not a small island and the farming in the lowlands is amazing for cattle. We're all about beef and liberty.

>I don't think we have any particular affinity to the sea

Royal Navy, trade and cosmopolitanism.

>>464387
Fantastic to honour a great bunch of lads like that. They're the ones who invented punching Nazis after all.

I'm starting to notice a divide between ability and knowledge among my peers lately and I'm not sure what to think about it. You've got the dudes who circlejerk talking about how things should be, but their practice is lacking sometimes entirely. Then you've got the dudes who just do the stuff, sometimes well sometimes not so, but they rarely talk about it.

So I'm starting to wonder if these leading content creators in niche and growing hobbies are actually just good bullshitters, regurgitating the best advice they've found online and presenting it as a personality.
I seem to be in this category in that I'm keen to learn how something is done, share theories and ideas about it, but when it comes to the actual doing it's completely foreign.

The map is not the territory, menu not the food etc.

I've prepared cottage pie for tea and it's currently sat in the fridge until I put it in the oven in around an hour or so. Should I grate cheese to put on top of the mash or would that be a step too far?

>>464391

Do it. What's wrong with you.

>>464392
The only time I've had cheesy mash was when I had it for school dinner once and it was lovely. I'm worried it won't live up to that high.

>>464393

There are some things in life you just have to accept you'll never feel the same joy about again. But cheesy mash on a cottage/shepherds pie is always better than plain.

Installed a new brake caliper today and flushed and bled the brake system.

Feeling chuffed with myself.

>>464395

I hoovered up.

I just tried to call the United Utilities 24-hour automated payment line so I could pay my water bill, and I got a recorded message saying I couldn't because the office is currently closed. I was so confused I hung up and rang back immediately, but I got the nonsensical message again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmQzeipJVXI

Hmm.

There's a bag of dogshit on my front path. My video doorbell didn't detect anyone dropping it. How did it get there? Did someone lob it twenty-odd yards from the street? Did a crow drop it?

Gave my oven a good clean and scrub with oven cleaner and now my pizza tastes of the stuff. But I'm sure it won't kill me.

Please talk me out of buying a nearly 3 grand macbook pro. I have no use for it, I just like shiny new tech things and the new macs are lovely. I always kid myself with "oh but I'll take up video editing, I'll become a programmer" or some bollocks but never do.

>>464401

If you can afford to just piss away three grand on overpriced shite, then you deserve it.

Talking to a Polish programmer. She lives in Warsaw, makes £70k. I've been to Warsaw, it's a cheap city. If she was in the UK she'd likely be making less or the same, and paying about a million times more for everything. I have similar experience here and I can't even get a job.

The standard of living on £70k in Warsaw must be through the roof. Lads, it's over, the tables have turned. Britain is finished. We'll all be scrabbling for cleaning jobs in Poland soon.

I'm not joking here, I think we're fucked. The standard of living in this country is shit. Pay is shit. Services are declining. I don't know what I'll do really, I can't see a positive future. I should've gone into finance as a young man.

>>464401
You don't need a macbook pro to code. I got a macbook pro and I don't regret it, but if I were you I'd just get an apple refurb m1 macbook air, they're about a grand. The macbook pro has fans, more power, and a nicer display. The apple silicone machines are very nice, you won't regret buying one whichever way you go.

Either way you'll want to go to notebookcheck.net for autistic German reviews.

>>464403
>The standard of living in this country is shit.
The pond at my local park has been dyed a deep cyan for the spring summer tourists. Witnessing that alongside a generally rundown environment, then a brand new travel interchange just up the road hs brought to the forefront of my mind that something just isn't right within my county at the moment, presumably the entire country. I don't know what it is, and thoughts that it's conservative government or brexit seem like they're missing the point of a greater issue.

Never more than now have I felt that people are living well beyond their means at the cost of everything and everyone else. My rent has gone up every year for the past 3, and while my place isn't bad it is a bedsit. I can't help but think my rent is paying for my landlords to continue a comparitively lavish lifestyle, while I've tightened my belt. I don't know that this is actually the case, but it's certainly easy to imagine and extend it to the type of people in local and national government, what with expenses and all that bollocks - it was only a few years ago I overheard a couple of civil servants discussing how to carpet a section of their house with public funds, using a rule that it must serve a working home office.

>>464403

I mean, it's been going that way a long while. You heard about all those digital nomad lot getting high paying Western jobs then fucking off to some SEA cplace to live for nothing and sip cocktails on the beach while they zoom call remotely managed the SQL database algorithm or whatever the fuck they do.

But the bit your missing is it doesn't pan out that way for everyone. The people behind the tills at Polski Sklep (which I suppose they just call Sklep) are getting fuck all. The builders and plumbers and electricians are still milking whatever they can get of their jobs over here. It's an economy of even higher inequality, despite the lower cost of living; with America backing them and supporting the wonders of the Free Market they will only continue to widen the gap and end up in the same position as us. That will be "progress".

We're all in the same shite sinking dinghy and it's called neoliberalism.

>>464403
>>464405
We all think we deserve better, but there isn't enough "better" to go around. So we all resent each other now. Society has become a giant crab bucket. And the only political parties that acknowledge this are the ones who say that the problem with the modern crab bucket is that there are too many eskimo crabs.

>>464407

>but there isn't enough "better" to go around

Except there is, there's fucking loads of it, actually. We've just been scraping the same proportion of it thinner and thinner over an increasing population for 40 years because the people who have it don't want to share.

I had a pack of Wotsits and there was an absolutely miniscule amount of residue left on my fingers. Broken Britain.

So my week ended with trying to claim Delay Repay after a bit of a disaster on Thursday night. Except that I couldn't find the train I was on anywhere on any of the usual publicly-available sources of data, and when I put in the journey details on the claim site it gave me an arrival time about 20 minutes after departure.

So I guess I might have to wait a couple of days to get my £2.20.

Alright, who wants to make the new weekend thread? Someone else should have a turn.

>>464411

Well this is your fault.

I vote for the belgian bun one, fits the theme.

>>464414
Threads died for this, reeeeee

A woman in front of me in the queue at NatWest this morning was asking pretty specific questions about AML reporting of cash withdrawals. She wanted to know the bank's reporting duties if she withdrew £10K in cash. Apparently what they told her then deterred her, and she left without withdrawing any money at all. The bank employee asked her "Is this for a car or something like it?", but she said no and that she'd rather not tell him while other people were around.

What kind of shady business are people up to these days.

>>464470
Most likely some form of scam. My MIL has just been scammed for the second time, this one was happily giving all her bank details from someone pretending to be from Barclays. A lot of the things they told her simply wouldn't have added up if she stopped to think for a second but she's easily flustered.

>>464470

It sounds like money muling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_mule

Is it just me, or has the level of detail into the reporting of Dr Moselys death been a bit disrespectful. It feels distinctly early 2000s.

I don't think I want to be in the office more, but I'm enjoying working from home a lot less than I used to. I think that's because I changed companies last year and at my previous place, where I was over lockdown, it wasn't uncommon to talk to several people during the day via Teams whereas here I'll generally spend thirty minutes to an hour on the phone with my ADHD and autistic colleague and that's it, which isn't the same. My favourite working day of the week is now the one day everyone from my team is in the office.

I like Lidl's new bonus where you win free fruit and I think it's making a real difference to give people free pineapple/mango or avocado that they might not otherwise ever have at home. I especially like that they didn't do like some fruit smoothie company and have people win apples every time because they're cheap.

That said, there's only so much pineapple and avocado I want to eat and Lidl had variable fruit quality - I don't even want to win the oranges/plums coupon.

>>464475
Sounds more like you need to get some mates in a chat going. Is there a social channel?

Personally I like working from home because I do fuck-all most days which gets very boring when you're in the office. That and the extra kip and money saved.

>>464477
>Sounds more like you need to get some mates in a chat going. Is there a social channel?

There's nothing like that. They don't even use Teams because they're very behind the times, plus it's a much smaller team. There's only two other people in my department, with one of them the aforementioned woman with autism.

Gigantic moth on the way to work.

>>464483
Don't matter how big he is mate, moths don't have jobs.
He's probably off down the bookies to have a flutter.

>>464475
In my last job I preferred office work to home work. I worked in a call centre and we'd get lots of different queries from customers that an individual just can't solve. It's nice to be able to put them on hold and walk a few metres to get help from someone and get it sorted in a few minutes. Compared to working from home, putting the customer on hold, putting a message in the Teams support group chat (which is full of banter and off topic stuff) and hoping for a speedy reply but sometimes having the customer on hold for half an hour.

The extra hour and a bit of sleep and savings on bus fare didn't compensate for a more stressful but also even more depressing experience.

Hypothetical but with how anti woke and anti censorship the Tories are, could I get away with tweeting racial slurs at Sunak and Badenoch or would I face consequences? If they pursued me they'd be hypocrites.

>>464487

It's the police that'll pursue you, not the government.

>>464487
I think Reform would distance themselves from your candidacy. If the press picked it up

>>464487
They are hypocrites. I think about this all the time. They even spoke out about that party donor who said Diane Abbott made him hate black people, even though he clearly didn’t. Their whole careers are predicated on being able to have it both ways. Also, you can tweet what you like to Kemi Badenoch; she can’t read.

The new grass I sowed two weeks ago is growing very patchy. I tried to rake the seeds into the soil so they wouldn't clump together, like the instructions suggested, but it somehow didn't work and I guess I'll have to buy more seeds to fill in the patches.

>>464492
The vegetable beds I removed the sod from earlier in the year have a nice evening growth of grass coming up across them, we can swap if you like.

Been having pains so today I had to have a prostate examination. Was over quickly but not very nice. Prostate swollen and inflamed, need to take piss samples and maybe go on antibiotics.

When he said there's two ways of getting my prostate examined I was foolishly hoping that one of them did not involve a finger up the arse. Unfortunately the two ways were to stand up and bend over the examination bed for a finger up the arse, or lay on my side on the examination bed for a finger up the arse.

>>464494
I think I'd rather bend over.

>>464494
Yeah, well which did you opt for?
Reminds me of the story of that gay bloke who 'edged' himself for a week prior to a turning himself in as a drugs mule. Save to say he wasn't carrying anything and thoroughlys enjoyed the examining officers probing.

People have become far too comfortable with bringing their dogs into businesses/restaurants etc. I don't want to eat next to your stinking fucking Labrador. People will moan about the working class and their XL bullys but I don't see them forcing their way into eating establishments with them at least.

>>464495
Me too. Weird, that. I wonder why?

>>464498

That way you're at least taking it like a man, not some delicate snowflake who's so scared they have to have it done hugging a pillow and sucking their thumb.

Perosnally I'm quite fond of prostate stimulation anyway, so it's really no big deal. I mean it's 2024 for crying out loud, what kind of poofter hasn't tried it up the arse?

>>464496
Bending over. More straight forward. The laying down one I would have had to raise on leg towards my chest so I would have been almost been in a foetal position staring at the wall which would be grim. I actually thought the prostate was much deeper into the rectum than it is in reality, I was expecting him to go knuckle deep and prod around for a minute. Just a slight bit of entry, bit of a prod, then done in 10 seconds.

I really don't like my anus being stimulated so it was long 10 seconds, I really cannot see the appeal of the physical element of pegging (I like the idea of the domination and emotional/psychological element, just not a six inch dildo being rammed up my bum).

I've just got off the phone with my parents. They've let me know they're going to be painting the brickwork outside their house that ubiquitous shade of grey. I am judging them.

>>464501

I've noticed drab grey for houses is incredibly common in Scotland when I was up there recently. I have to assume it's to do with the locally available materials to make bricks out of, but it looks depressing as fuck.

The last time I got my prostate checked it was by a reasonably attractive female GP. I got an erection and I was a little bit disappointed when she pulled out.

Why is it so cold? This country is just relentlessly depressing.

>>464507
June innit.

I ask you in advancec to forgive the dm posting.

How bad is crime in London really? Do you have to be careful about using your phone in public so it doesn't get grabbed? Is it true that kids just walk around with balaclavas on as a matter of course now?

>>464509
You absolutely cannot walk about with your phone in hand in many areas of London. My girlfriend worked in a cafe near Angel and of the 10 or so girls working there, 8 of them had their phones snatched from hand.

>>464507
I don't like to weather post, but I honestly can't stand it lately. It feels freezing until there's a break in the cloud, then it's 25 degrees, and you have to carry a raincoat or an umbrella in case all Hell breaks loose.

It's the 10 year anniversary of GamerGate in August. I lost my virginity to a genderqueer fisherperson that same month. After sex we discussed video games and GG. They said that playing Candy Crush made them more of a gamer than someone who played Skyrim, because Candy Crush was a puzzle game and the first video games like Pac Man were puzzle games, so I guess they were arguing Candy Crush is more pure a game than Skyrim. At the time I thought they were retarded so just smiled and nodded, but then when I think back, maybe they're right. I dislike both games, so I have no horse in the race. Could their argument have defeated GG in its tracks?

>>464512
GamerGate was a bunch of people who like moaning doing loads of moaning. You could have given them the moon on a stick and the GamerGaters still would have whinged up a storm, because they're cretins, The suggestion it was about some greater ideal is an absurdity.

Congratualations on having sex though.

>>464513
But in a way ethics in journalism is important. As is not harassing women. If Rishi Sunak slept with Beth Rigby and Laura Kuenessburg then they wrote glowing articles about him, how is that different from Zoe Quinn having sex with Kotaku men and getting a glowing article about Depression Quest?

But then harassing women for existing in gaming is wrong and a decade of anti-woke harassment campaigns has made the world worse. They both have their pros and cons.

>>464513

Gamergate was an internet retard slapfight that started on Tw*tter and should have fucking stayed there. It should have been irrelevant, but a handful of grifters needed it to be a much bigger deal than it was. No-one came out of it looking good.

>>464514
There was a lot of harrassment flying around from both sides when gamergate was happening.

The takeaway from the whole thing for me was realising how absurdly one sided the media coverage of events can be.

Gamergate was the gaming press closing ranks to protect its own and attempting to smear essentially it's entire audience to save face.

I think it was a lot more culturally significant than anyone would like to admit, because while the whole thing was pretty embarrassing, once the real idpol grifters got involved, they really forced the Kulturkampf onto a lot of people who would otherwise have been contently ignorant about any of it. The grifters made an enemy out of a group that they really needn't have provoked.

Of course you have predictable tossers who still look at the whole thing as some e-drama where one side was smelly chronic masturbators and the other side was lovely innocent women, so it's obvious who was right and wrong without knowing anything about it. But I think in time the gamers will be vindicated- What's most telling is how you kind of saw most outlets just drop the whole thing and memory hole it, when they realised how rapidly they were losing their audience to Youtubers and Twitch streamers.

It was like an attempted coup, that failed, and now everyone just pretends never happened.

I see Gamergate as more like Brexit. Gaming journalism was corrupt and exploitative, and the people were ready to rise up and fight back. Just like how we were all angry about austerity, and how it wasn’t working. Then, some people came along and inserted themselves at the head of this populist movement, and steered it in completely the wrong direction. Don’t blame bankers and politicians for your shitty lives; the real problem is too many Polish roofers. Don’t blame incestuous lobbying and bribery for the laughable state of videogame journalism; your real enemy is women’s rights for some reason. And people, unfortunately, listened, and ruined what could have been a noble attempt to improve everyone’s lives.

>>464519

>Don’t blame incestuous lobbying and bribery for the laughable state of videogame journalism; your real enemy is women’s rights for some reason.

Except it was really more the other way around, from the other side. Gamers aren't correctly accusing us of corruption and insider dealing, instead gamers are all just horrible sexists trying to prevent women's rights for some reason.

It was easy to tie the Gamergate lot together with a stereotype of the average /r9k/ poster, because no shit, there were plenty of neckbeards in amongst them. But it was never about that until they made it about that, because it was easier to do that than defend the shit they had been caught doing.

Is GamerGate 2.0 (The Sweet Baby Inc saga) less justifiable than the original GG? Protecting journalistic integrity is one thing, but attacking companies and people merely for putting blacks and women in games is beyond the pale.

I don't know what GamerGate is, but everyone I've seen talking about it is an obvious oxygen thief.

I, for one, have never had a strong opinion on gamer gate. It seems like the type of thing knobheads care about.

>>464521

It's just another Reichstag Fire, pay it no mind.

>>464522
>>464523

Very enlightened of you lads. I tip my fedora to you both.

The only notable thing about GamerGate was that it showed Steve Bannon how to easily weaponise angry young men, and it's basically been downhill from there.